Alabama

I ate it so you don't have to: Burger King Chicken Fries

Burger King's Chicken Fries return to the fold as an interesting food for a boring time of the year.

It's late August. It's 300 degrees out, the Red Sox are awful and you're already done with all your summer plans. This is the time of year when "Hey, let's go to BK and grab some Chicken Fries" could potentially be the most exciting thing someone could hear all day.

After a two-plus year hiatus, we once again live in a world where Chicken Fries are a thing, even if we never figured out why we needed them in the first place (although, I'm still convinced that, deep down, we do). This time, though, they've got hashtags on the box. So, that's new.

Burger King Chicken Fries

Chicken Fries are a late-summer torrid love affair. They're brief, but their candle just burns that much brighter.

This is a result of them grading out as a firm "not bad," and the fact that you only get nine of them for $3.50. That might not seem like a problem, until you realize that A) a gluttonous fistful of nine french fries is neither that gluttonous nor that big of a fistful and B) Chicken fries aren't that much bigger than their potato counterparts.

Similar to how KFC heralded the demise of buns with its "Bread is Dead" campaign for the Double Down, Burger King seems to have it out for potatoes, claiming that they are "so last year."

While I'm not convinced there has really been a debate on whether or not potatoes have been in vogue since the Potato Famine, I'm not sure how I feel about the fried chicken industry's efforts to try and tear this country apart by picking fights with bread and potatoes. We've been doing a perfectly good job of that on our own without bringing lunch into this.

Also, if you want to start throwing shame on potatoes, make sure you take longer than 15 seconds to eat. I've seen bag fries last longer than a full pack of Chicken Fries.

So what do they taste like?

At first glance, Burger King's Chicken Fries are a lot like really thin-shaped nuggets. That's not exactly the case, both in terms of ingredients and the way a chicken pencil represents the next stage in the evolution of shoving fried chicken into your face.

The Chicken Fries feature some heavy breading and surprisingly spicy seasoning. They come off much more like a colorful chicken tender than a bland nugget. The Chicken Fries come in with a big emphasis on the "Fry," with the batter and generic array of "savory spices and herbs" coming out as the star. Depending on your view, this is either a bad thing or a very good thing.

It's not quite a clustercluck, but there's a noticeable lack of meat payload in the deep-fried cock-a-doodle-doo torpedo. The increased surface area definitely plays a factor in it skews the meat:batter ratio and results in an overall chicken deficiency, but that's the trade off you get in exchange for the efficient snacking design that lets you mow these things down like white meat Twizzlers.

With so much Fry action going on, there's not that much room left for the chicken. It's like that watch from "Spy Kids" where Danny Trejo didn't have any more room to fit in the clock. I blame math. It turns out geometry was never meant to allow for a chicken pin missile full of actual meat.

The chicken content that does live inside the seasoned batter silo isn't much to behold. It's pretty bland and, when examined up close, somewhat resembles the inside of angel food cake. Don't try and sell me on this being actual chicken, Burger King. Although, to be honest, I'm not sure that the actual meat even plays that much of a factor in the end result.

When you take a bite, there's definite chicken-y flavor. With that said, the chicken-ness probably isn't coming from what ultimately amounts to white protein filling. Instead, it seems like the chicken broth-like flavor is actually incorporated into the spice package. In short, there are sort of mystic chicken crystal strewn throughout the breading to make up for the lack of real meat.

Here's the good part about all of this: No one cares about how the sausage chicken is made. As long as you're not actively trying to isolate the individual factors that go into the chicken fry, you're unlikely to notice any of the flaws. And unless you're worried about how healthy the ingredients are (and let's face it, these aren't going to be worse for you than regular fries or nuggets), Chicken Fries hold up just fine against the rest of the fast food market.

The final word

Like other summer blockbusters, Chicken Fries are meant to be enjoyed without much (or any) deep thought. They're the Michael Bay movies of fast food: There are a bunch of flavor explosions coming out of nowhere and there's no real meat to the plot. It's best to just cram through the whole thing and enjoy it without picking it apart.

If that's not for you, you can go watch "Boyhood" after eating at fancy restaurants with your "wait staff" and your "place settings" and "bathrooms where people aim where they pee."

In the meantime, the rest of us will be stuffing packs of chicken fries into purses and sweatshirt pockets while we go watch "Guardians of the Galaxy." (Seriously, go see "Guardians of the Galaxy." It's better than Chicken Fries.)